


The Time Out

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel Comforts Dean Winchester, Crying Dean Winchester, Guilty Dean Winchester, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), M/M, Possessed Castiel (Supernatural), Reconciliation, Scared Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-09 22:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20124847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Chuck’s changed almost everything, pulling his ownEveand TFW find themselves facing down creatures that are either brand new or souped up or fusions of any combination of monsters they’ve met before.But a vampire god, that’s a new one on them.They better find a way to get rid of it though, because it’s currently possessing their angel.





	The Time Out

“I hate this,” Dean said.

“I don’t love it,” Sam shot back, panting, as he kicked the dungeon door open and backed into the room.

Dean felt the grip he had on Cas’s legs slipping, his palms slick with sweat, and adjusted his hold to end up with fistfuls of the angel’s slacks instead. Even then he wasn’t sure he could hang on until they reached the cot, but it was just a couple of feet away, and…

Cas groaned between them, and Dean tried not to look down, but he couldn’t help it; the blood from the bite on his neck was still tacky and red against Cas’s now chalk white skin.

And the angel’s eyes were open just a crack, but the gleam of red there told Dean they were out of time.

He dropped Cas’s legs, hating the heavy thump of it, and reached for Sam even as his brother started to curse at him.

“Dean, what the hell…”

He grabbed Sam’s arm, yanking him away, making him drop Cas’s upper body the way Dean had his legs, winced as he saw Cas’s head bang to the floor, but they had to get out.

He nearly threw Sam at the door, and was right behind him, pushing his brother out into the corridor, pulling the door shut at their backs, and then…

They both jumped as something heavy hit the dungeon door, rocking it, but it held.

Both brothers pressed themselves against the opposite wall on reflex, panting and shaken, and Cas stared angrily back at them, eyes burning with hunger.

“Dean,” he said. “Sam.”

And how could it sound like him when it wasn’t _just_ him anymore? 

“You’re not going to leave me in here, are you? Please. Just let me out, and everything will be okay.”

Dean forced himself to look away, and tried to ignore the voice in his head that had him reaching for the handle on the dungeon door.

“Upstairs,” he told Sam. “Now.”

Sam nodded, but his eyes were fixed on Cas, and it took Dean giving him an almighty shove to get him moving.

Even then, they could hear Cas calling after them, plaintive, desperate.

But it wasn’t really Cas.

++

“How the hell could this happen?”

Dean slammed the book shut and dumped it in the ever growing pile of tomes they’d hastily checked through. Once upon a time, this place had been the key to solving a mystery, finishing a hunt, saving lives.

That had only been a couple of months ago, but it was outdated and useless now.

Chuck had seen to that, turning everything upside down and inside out, throwing together monsters like some omnipotent Dr Moreau and hatching new ones that defied all the rules.

So Dean knew the answer to his own question, but Sam still looked sadly at him.

“We’ll find a way to fix this,” he said. 

“Sure. Right. Of course.”

Dean slumped back in his chair. So far the only success they’d had with all the creatures running amok was just brute violence, hacking and shooting and beating shit to death.

He couldn’t believe he’d thrown a pout before if he didn’t get to use the grenade launcher he’d acquired; he’d had to use it six times in as many weeks, but with everything else going on, some guy breaking out heavy artillery from a muscle car didn’t seem to be of too much interest to the authorities.

Maybe if he’d used it this time, too, then Cas wouldn’t be locked up downstairs, and possessed by the spirit of some vampire god.

“You could not make this shit up,” he muttered.

Sam huffed at him. “Chuck did. But we made it through everything he’s thrown at us, Dean. We’ll make it through this as well.”

“All of us?”

Sam nodded, and turned the book he was reading towards his brother. “All of us.”

++

When they went back down to the dungeon, Cas was standing eerily still in the middle of the room.

He turned at their approach, and he looked so forlorn that Dean ached for him.

“I thought you were going to leave me down here,” Cas said.

“Don’t listen to it,” Sam warned. He had the _Eichnor_ box in his hand, and Dean had palmed the syringe just in case Cas came too close to the door.

“Don’t leave me alone, again, Dean, Sam, please. I know I deserved it last time, I hurt Sam, but I didn’t…. Please.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dean snapped. Holy crap, was this thing going to read Cas and subject them to a replay of their greatest hits?

Cas cocked his head to one side and Dean wanted to scream at it. “I don’t understand why you’re angry at me.”

“I’m not,” he started, but then he made himself focus on the colour of Cas’s eyes, no longer that deep blue he’d lost himself in (and probably never would again, because even if they, when they, got Cas through this, Dean had ruined that, with those four words), and the tiny sharp points just visible pressing against Cas’s bottom lip.

That was not his, their, angel.

But he would be again, soon enough.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said to Sam, and they both started repeating the rite of Exorcism.

Maybe it wasn’t a demon in Cas, but it was an unwanted presence, a possession however you looked at it, and Cas screamed as their words took hold.

A shimmering essence formed in the air around them, and the temperature took a nose dive.

Cas was suddenly coming at them, not waking, just levitating towards the door at speed like something had just picked him up and moved him.

He came to a halt bare inches from the wood and panted at them through the grill.

“He’s mine,” a voice said, deeper than the angel’s own timbre. “You can’t have him back.”

_Oh yeah?_ Dean thought. _ If you can hear me, Cas, hang on._

But aloud he just kept going with the rite and then Cas gave a final scream, and flew back to skid across the floor and land against the cot.

They crashed into the room, then, and Sam opened the box.

“Dean, now!”

The thing, reduced once more to just a disembodied presence, and weakened by being hauled out of the angel, was trying to get back into him

It was like a glowing cloud, reaching weakly for Cas, but Dean got there first, and slammed the syringe of holy water right into Cas’s neck.

Possessing an angel when Heaven was on the wane was one thing, and Cas’s angelic immune system was whacked, but slipping into a body with holy water running through the blood stream, that was something else.

It looked like not all the rules had been changed.

Dean backed up first as the ghostly Dracula decided on the next available home, and started for him, but then the pull of the box got hold of it, and it was yanked inside, every last wisp.

Sam slammed the box shut, and fastened the hasp into place.

The box shook in his hold, just once, and then went still.

Dean stared at him, shaken and wary, but when nothing else happened, he tossed the syringe, and ran to their angel.

The wound on Cas’s neck was slowly coming together, but he still looked pale as milk.

Sam set the box down, and helped Dean get Cas to his feet. Dean helped him boost Cas into a shoulder carry and then followed them out of the dungeon, leaving the trapped creature behind, for now.

++

Cas woke up to a sharp pain in his neck, and immediately reached for it.

A hand closed around his, and he opened his eyes to find Dean lying next to him.

“Had to stitch it up,” he said. “It was shutting over slow, but you were still bleeding. I’ll check ‘em later.”

Cas nodded. He started to sit up, aware that Dean probably wouldn’t want him being this close to him now that he was awake, and no longer possessed…

He shivered at the feeling of the vampire god inside him, overwhelming his defences and filling him with an unnatural hunger for blood.

If there were more things like that out there, that could take control of him so easily…

Yes, his Father had proven himself worse even than Lucifer.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Cas was tugged back down, firmly, and Dean put his hand in the middle of the angel’s chest.

“You just got de-possessed an hour ago,” he chided. “After that thing tossed you around like a rag doll. Stay. Put.”

“Dean, I…”

Dean shook his head. “I don’t want to hear it. Look, Cas…..I…. I didn’t mean what I said. I know, I keep doing this, but I…. Jack, Mom…. “

“I understand.” He should have told them, at least warned them, but there was in him at the time some hope to fix Jack, to save him, and a deep fear of what Dean might do if he found Jack had slipped.

He couldn’t hope for Dean’s forgiveness, but at least perhaps now Dean was willing to accept his comfort.

“No, you don’t,” Dean said. “I should never have said that. I didn’t mean it, and I…. Cas, if I lost you again….”

He cupped the angel’s jaw, stroking gently, and Cas could feel the longing in him. Dean wanted to...to hold him again, to kiss him, and yet was holding back.

“Dean?”

Dean smiled sadly. “Don’t exactly have the right, now, to just do it, huh.”

Cas reached up for him, and there was no denying the hope in Dean’s eyes just as Dean couldn’t deny Cas, and pulled the angel into his arms.

“Don’t leave me,” he said, voice rough and painful sounding. “Cas, Cas, please, I can’t lose you, I can’t lose anymore of my family.”

Cas rocked him gently, wishing it was in him to promise Dean it wouldn’t come to that. But they lived in a different world, now, cruel and dark, and Cas no longer had the strength to protect them as he once did.

It seemed he no longer had the strength to protect himself either.

So maybe they would protect each other.

After all, that was what family did.


End file.
